Since the opening, this shop has long been on my list. After all, proteges of Noma (or in this case Nordic Food Lab) all end up having very successful eateries (Luksus, Contra/Wildair, etc.). So when NUR opened in 2014, I have earmarked this place on Foursquare as a place to try. Interestingly enough, the restaurant gained a macaron from the Michelin man in 2015, only to lose it recently in the 2016 guide. With these places, it is always best to have a dining companion to know how each and every part of the meal is cooked. So when L (who knows even more about food than I do and has worked in top eateries in both HK and NYC) invites me to dinner on my second week in Hong Kong, I jump on that opportunity. Incidentally, we are also treated to flutes of Champagne on the house as soon as we are settled down.
R&L Legras Champagne Brut Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs
A classic, chardonnay-dominated champagne. It pours a straw golden hue with long legs and fine streams of carbonation. On the nose, the champagne is fresh, toasty and big with notes of bready yeasts (think sourdough), along with citrus oils, granny smith apples, brioche and the slightest of oak. The palate is just as assertive, yielding a strong mineral backbone and decent acidity to keep the creamy champagne very fresh. Lemon zest, pears, lychee nuts and even pistachios can be found. The finish is somewhat long with decent balance between the acidity and creamy mousse. Only slight blemish is the somewhat muddy end. Otherwise, quite an enjoyable champagne. 87
Canapé
From left to right: cucumber cylinder, confit carrots, confit tomato on tomato cracker, corn taco
As we sat down and sipped on the bubbly, we are presented with a couple of little bites. Meanwhile, I am leafing through the Burgundy-heavy wine list.
Cucumber Cylinder
A cylinder of cucumber is hollowed out with a cantaloupe ball occupying the center. The cylinder is then topped with cucumber jelly and sheets of cucumber compressed into one sheet. There is a final dusting of Roselle powder, which interestingly enough, tastes like hibiscus in that both are rather sour. This heeds quite well with the entire bite as it is fresh, sweet, refreshing with a minty finish.
Confit Carrots
Sticks of carrots are confit-ed in a mixture of carrot juice and oil. The ricotta (?) cheese is churned in-house and deliciously creamy. Paired with the cumin and carrot/tomato powder, the veggie stick delivers spicy yet sweet flavors, with an earthiness coming from the root vegetable along with umami.
Confit Tomato on Tomato Cracker
Probably the best of the bunch. This bite is composed of homemade ricotta, confit tomato and shiso leaf all placed on top of the tomato cracker. It is noteworthy that the tomato cracker is made entirely from tomato water which is then dehydrated and shaped into a crisp. You can even see the seeds clearly. The flavors of this bite are so potent that one can definitely note the burst of incredibly concentrated tomato essence, behind a smoky veil. Texture too is on point as the cracker reminds me of those rice chips topped with tomato powder that I would eat as a kid. Umami. Plenty and plenty of umami.
Corn Taco
Possessing obvious Mexican influences, this bite is probably the least special of the bunch. The corn water is dehydrated with maltodextrin to create a thin sheet akin to a taco shell. Inside lie kernels of charred corn and avocado foam. The corn is plump and yields a delectable sweetness along with some smoke. Although I do not really detect the avocado flavors, I do note some of the spice inside the shell. Interesting.
I proceeded to get a bottle of Chablis, seeing that most of the dishes would fare well with chalky, mineral chardonnay.
2011 Domaine Servin Chablis Les Forêt
The wine pours a light golden color with medium legs. Surprisingly enough, the nose has a lot of oak, so much so that it is almost atypical of the archetypal Chablis. Nonetheless, the nose still displays a concentrated bouquet of lemon curd, vanilla, custard and spice. Nonetheless, I do note a certain vegetal, almost greenness, to the wine. The palate surely confirms my thin as the body is rather lean with a strong mineral streak. This is then followed by citrus oils, chalk, toasty brioche and even more oaky vanilla. Finish is of medium length and the wine ends with a slightly acidic cut. This wine surely smells a lot bigger and more promising than it actually tastes. It is alright, I suppose, as a food wine. 86
Goose Ham
This is unbelievable. What we have here is goose ham aged in-house. The breast (on the right) is aged for 6 months while the leg is aged for 3. Pairing these bites are cubes of pickled chayote (合掌瓜) and cured kombu. The kombu is especially of note as it is cured in kombucha and lemon verbena. As a result, they are sweet and slightly tangy, which complements the pickles quite well. Even by itself, it is delicious. As for the ham, the leg portion is incredibly creamy and smoky with a nutty flavor. There is barely any resistance in the bite. As for the breast, it is smokier and saltier just because the slab of meat is thicker and requires more salt. All in all, a simple yet mind-bogglingly good. The complexity of flavors and length of the ham, which is similar to that of jamon iberico, is just so impressive. Just wow.
Kombucha
To rinse the palate off, we have a shot of kombucha made from spinach and Marigold flowers. Interesting flavors of mint, spice and even Muscat are present. It is a fruity sweetness with some spice, much akin to that of the Fruitips gummies (能得利) which I ate as a kid.
Romaine Lettuce
More classic flavors being deconstructed and presented in an unfamiliar way. Here, we have a play on the Caesar salad. Sandwiched between two romaine lettuce pieces, which are cut in the shape of leaves, lay mint leaf, pistachio cream and house-cured (?) sardines. The result? A mixture of sweetness and saltiness from the vegetable and cured fish (akin to anchovies, I should say), respectively. Meanwhile the leaves are fresh and offer a delectable crunch. It is almost like a thin burger with all the classic Caesar salad flavors and textures inside. Great start to the meal.
King Crab
This dish provides even cleaner flavors than the previous one. Shards of king crab meat, along with a dollop of yuzu creme fraiche, are buried under chunks of pomello. For garnishes, we have Pagonia flowers, lemon basil and lemon zest. The dish is then finished off with a dashi flavored with lemongrass so it imbues a citrus undertone. The dashi lends a hearty touch while the pomelo provides the astringency. The dish feels particularly clean and restorative as the flavors alternate between sweet and sour. Harmonious and light, this dish is incredible and I can certainly eat a whole bowl of it. Even worth noting is that the garnishes are 'foraged' from the restaurant's back door garden!
Side note: Thanks to my dining companion, L, I have a picture of this. How could I have forgotten to take this picture?!
Hen of the Woods
Oh my God. Definitely the dish of the night for me. There are so many parts to this dish, and each part was done to perfection. It is this geeky, zealous attention to detail that makes me appreciate NUR so much. The main character of this dish, a shard of Hen of the Woods mushrooms (maitake - 舞菇), is cooked by basting it in butter nonstop for 5 minutes. The alternating bursts of heat and cold help create the perfect texture where the exterior fringes are wonderfully charred but the juices still remain within the core which helps the mushroom release unctuous bursts of umami with every bite. This is supported by the mushroom broth which is made from caramelized onions, fringes of the matsutake, maitake and cheaper cuts of other mushrooms. The end result is an incredibly heady, thick broth with a lot of body. The amount of extraction from the ingredients is so high that I would not be surprised if the resultant broth is centrifuged to accentuate the flavors. The dish is then garnished with purslane leaves and goji berries. The berries are particularly of note, as they are macerated in a mixture of their own juices and glucose and provide an acidic and sweet contrast to the unabashed umami flavors. Just incredible.
Mackerel
Definitely another hit. The sawara (鰆) is first brined and lightly smoked before being grilled to perfection. Delightfully pink in the center, the grilled fish conveys copious amounts of smokiness and fish oils. Accompanying it is a spring roll where a slice of yam bean is used to roll up garden herbs. Biting down, the roll is woody, herbaceous and ends with a nutty and minty kick. The dish is then finished off in a walnut milk sauce and droplets of fig leaf oil. For me, the best part of the dish is the walnut sauce as it shows the attention to the most minute of details from the chef. As can be seen from the pictures, the walnut milk is white. This is because when extracting the milk, the walnuts are shelled and then peeled to the very core where it is white and contains nothing brown in color. This helps keep the sauce white and concentrated. Again, it is details like this that impresses me a lot. Only gripe? The temperature of the fish is a bit on the cold side. Perhaps it has just been sitting for a while because the restaurant is short-staffed for the night.
Bread and Butter
Just as expected, NUR produces its own butter as well, and boy does it do it well. The butter, made from cow's milk, is cultured for 30 days before being churned and smoked. It has a luxuriously creamy texture and a smoky undertone. Very delicious. Another note on the details - the butter, which is of room temperature, is served in a perfect quenelle. Portioning and shaping butter while at room temperature is particularly hard. That the restaurant is able to do that shows the expertise behind all the tiny details.
And the bread. The dough is made from 100% whole wheat with plenty of malts. It is then proofed for 8 hours. This extra proofing period helps tone down the acidity in the sourdough and imbues it with more sweetness. Very nice crust too.
Golden Egg
Rather than sous vide-ing their eggs at 63 degrees Celcius like what a lot of other haute cuisine spots do, the Taiyouran egg, imported from Japan, is merely soft-poached in a broth made with saffron, togarashi (唐辛子), and curry powder. This imbues the outer whites of the egg with a golden yellow color. Sitting beneath the egg is a mixture of finely diced haricot vert and shelled snowed peas. The pods is then reduced in a vegetable stock to make a pea stock that is poured back into the dish. Strands of cordyceps mushrooms (蟲草菇), which are simmered, dehydrated and deep fried, sit next to the egg along with locally farmed arugula as garnishes.
The egg itself is smoky in flavor with copious amounts of umami. Cutting into the egg, the sweet yolk is so incredibly thick and viscous that it just clings onto the knife. Incredible execution. The legumes are very fresh and sweet, with the peas in particular providing a clean flavor with hints of peanuts. The cooking is impeccable too as the snow peas just pop in the mouth like the tiny eggs of salmon roe. Lastly, the locally sourced arugula provides a lingering astringency. Texturally, the fungus shards provide a crunchy contrast and this ties the dish together. So many things going on but they all support each other, in both flavors and textures. Peas are not the most common pairing to an egg dish (think truffles). But this rendition from NUR, using common ingredients, knocks it out of the park really, really well.
One minor quibble - I thought NUR emphasizes on locally sourced ingredients. While the arugula is locally farmed, the egg is imported from Japan. Why is that?
Langoustine
The second to the last main course, and one that I look forward to as this is my favorite crustacean. A singular, plump langoustine from New Zealand is pan roasted with preserved shrimp (sakura ebi 蝦米 maybe?) sitting on top to accentuate the shellfish flavors. Accompanying the crustacean is a dollop of sunflower seed puree topped with sunflower seeds. There is also a piece of compressed plum on the side and the dish is finished off with fermented plum juice and leaves of lemon thyme. For me, the shellfish is perfectly cooked mi cuit (just translucent in the center!) and any more heat would turn it into rubber. Meanwhile, the preserved shrimps add a heady, concentrate burst of umami which goes superbly well with the nuttiness from the sunflower seeds. Surprisingly, the compressed plum, which has a texture of tomatoes, do not lend much acidity but rather, fruity sweetness. It is the lemon thyme that provides that acidity along with a woody, herbaceous flavor. And it does go very well with the langoustine and the puree. Awesome complements indeed.
Another minor quibble, and one exactly same as the sardine dish. While the taste is incredible, the shellfish itself is slightly cold. Oh well.
BBQ Goose
This dish has two parts. First up is a bone broth made from the roasted carcass of the bird along with aromatics and spices. The restaurant did get the temperature of the broth right as it is piping hot. Topped with shards of myoga ginger (茗荷), the broth is hearty and slightly acidic. In particular, I pick up a lot of Chinese spice, especially star anise. Very good and restorative.
The main remaining goose meat is then dry aged for six days to remove the moisture and accentuate the bird's inherent flavor. The goose is then fermented in koji (米曲) and finally roasted over binchotan (備長炭). The dish is finished off with singular pieces of Tokyo turnips, pickled radish, and pickled myoga ginger. The execution of this dish is superb. The dry aging definitely helps as all I get is an intense, concentrated goose flavor. I can also taste the fermented flavors of the rice koji as well, and certainly reminds me of that umami taste of sake lees. For the me the goose is roasted perfectly medium-rare with the blood still oozing out while the charred skin is delectably crispy (almost crystal lattice-like structure), with a thin layer of fat separating the juicy flesh and the smoky skin. Just beautiful.
The vegetables are nice complements but nothing too eye-opening. The myoga is slightly sour but mostly sweet. The pickled radish is just what you would expect - sour and astringent. Finally, the turnip is hearty as it is braised in chicken stock and butter. Nice, but nothing too exciting.
Pink and moist right in the center.
Apples
Perhaps this is the point where it starts to show the weakest links of the tasting menu. Granted, despite the minor quibbles, all the previous dishes are unquestionable hits. Totaling an exact 200 calories, this dish is a play on textures revolved around apples. First up is a single quenelle of Granny Smith sorbet that is made purely by the juice without any sugar or cream. The ice crystals are miniscule and the sorbet eats like a thickened smoothie. The second texture being explored is a ribbon-like slice of Fuji apple compressed in its own juices. The slice is intense in apple flavors with a delicate balance between acidity and sweetness. The leaves of sorrel do add a herbaceous touch to the dish. Finally, the third texture is an apple terrine. Gala apples are sliced thinly and roasted. The heat then caramelizes the apples and releases an inherent gelling agent called pectin. This compresses the apples into a terrine like a fruit roll-up. In fact, I feel like I am biting down into a hawthorn crisp, or 山楂卷 which I love when I was a kid.
And this is where the problem is. The dish is not inventive. Sorbets are commonplace and fruit compressions are ubiquitous. Finally, the apple terrine is ripped straight off from Raymond Blanc (Four of the guys from the kitchen came from there, I think?). The execution is certainly flawless. But I feel there is not much thought going into the composition of the dish.
Chocolate
Definitely the weakest link in the entire menu. This dessert composes of several parts. First, a gel made of Roselle is hidden underneath a mound of chocolate mousse sprayed out of an iSi soda siphon and then brûléed with a blowtorch. A quenelle of fig leaf ice cream, on which a chocolate nib tuile rests, is placed on top of the mousse. Individually, the components are done well. The cocoa tuile has a nice acidity and astringency from the tannins of the chocolate, while the fig leaf ice cream is superb and has a distinct, concentrated flavor of figs. The mousse too, is aerated well and has a good balance between sweet and bitter. However, the parts do not combine well together. The delicate fig flavor from the ice cream is slaughtered by the potent, robust flavors of the chocolate. Meanwhile, the Roselle gel did not go well with the chocolate, nor the ice cream for that matter, as it is way too sour, killing the smokiness and sweetness of everything else on the plate. What was the pastry chef thinking?
Petit Fours
Probably the saving grace amidst the other 2 desserts is the petit four. Rested on a fig leaf and a bed of short grain sushi rice, a skewer of koji ice cream is dipped in miso caramel chocolate and topped with miso caramel and a chip of dehydrated, you guess it, miso caramel too. (to which my dining companion remarked, "This makes miso horny.") I appreciate the nice touch of detail where plating the dish with short grain rice hearkens to the koji ice cream. Taste-wise, the mignardise tastes just like a good ice cream bonbon. The koji flavors definitely comes through as I pick up rice and sake undertones. The chocolate is not too abrasive nor astringent, as with the caramel garnish. There is certainly some smokiness to the miso caramel, which wraps up quite well with the ricey sweetness. Very nice.
So what to make of the dinner? Certainly, most of the dishes, barring desserts, are big hits. From both inventiveness of ingredients to cooking techniques to enthusiasm conveyed, Chef Nurdin Topham and his team nail the flavors, presentation and textures of the components of each dish. While some of the dishes revolve around presenting familiar flavors in a different form (in particular, the romaine dish), a lot of the others present to me unfamiliar yet thoughtful flavor pairings. The Taiyouran egg dish immediately comes to mind, as the flavors of yolk, curry, cordyceps, and sweet peas coming together are way beyond the perfunctory. Nonetheless, the issue of cold serving temperatures still remains. But the more important question lies in the origin of ingredients. For a restaurant boasting the sourcing of local ingredients, to the extent there even is a private herb garden, it is ironic to see how so many ingredients, from Taiyouran eggs to sawara sardines, are actually imported. Should these two problems cost NUR the Michelin star in the 2016 guide? I am not the judges, but I definitely do not think so. (12/1/2015)